Fillies power past Slaton

Though the Shallowater Fillies led by 19 entering the third quarter, Jayden Miller wanted to lift her team’s confidence even further.

By scoring 11 points in the second half, Miller guided Shallowater to 62-41 home win Tuesday night against the Slaton Tigerettes.

"For me, it’s important for me to get my team up because when I get my team up, I get myself up," Miller said. "I think that really helped my game improved."

Miller, who scored 16 total points, allowed the Fillies to hold back a surging Slaton offense, which made six shots from the 3-point line in the second half.

Powered by two consecutive 3-point shots from Avery Bentacourt, Slaton started the third with a 10-4 run to cut its deficit to 41-23. Miller, however, prevented Shallowater to lose its pace by making a shot from the right baseline. Following Miller’s field goal, Cayenne Williams added a score with a shot near the free-throw line to push Shallowater’s lead to 45-23 with two minutes left in the quarter.

With Miller and Williams making their shots late in the quarter, Shallower found a well timed break to recalibrate its attention to close out the game.

Though Slaton outscored the Fillies 21-17 in the third, it couldn’t slash further at its deficit to come close to tying. By delivering the ball to Miller in the fourth quarter, Shallowater allowed its offense to slow the game down and drain as much time as possible.

"I think we kind of got a little sluggish in the third quarter," Miller said. "I think in the fourth quarter if we let that happen again the game would have been a lot closer than it should have been. So we just recouped and got our energy back."

Prior to the start of the second half, the Fillies built a lead as large as 20 points. Shallowater nearly had an almost perfect defensive first quarter.

Just a minute into the game, Bentacourt made a 3-pointer, but Slaton couldn’t make a shot for the rest of the quarter. As Slaton struggled to score in the initial quarter, the Fillies scored 14 consecutive points to gain an 18-3 lead. After Shallowater started the second quarter with three points, Nae Lacy finally ended the scoreless streak for Slaton with a shot from the paint two minutes in.

The Filles, however, went on to outscore Slaton 15-10 to close the first half.

"I thought that Shallowater really came out hitting being the agressor," Slaton coach Chris Arledge said. "That’s something we prided ourselves on all year, coming out defensively and being the aggressor, but we didn’t tonight."

The win over the Tigerettes gave Shallowater a District 2-3A opening win and extended its win streak to two games.

"It’s just a great win to start district," Shallowater coach Chuck Darden said. "I was proud of our kids for responding on the offensive end. There’s a point in the game where we had to keep scoring with them for a while, and I think we did a pretty good job of that."